


And If You'll Come I’ll Take You Somewhere To Go

by luninosity



Series: Holiday Fic [11]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: April Fools' Day, Bodyswap, Emotions, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Happy Ending, Holidays, Love Confessions, M/M, Mansion Fic, Not Quite Shower Sex, Only Temporary Though, Power Swap, Protective!Erik, References to Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>April Fools' Day mansion-fic. Which has to mean body-and-power-swap fic, right...?</p>
<p>
  <i>“Yes,” Charles says, rather apologetically even though this can’t possibly be his fault, “you seem to be me. And I…well, I’m you. At the moment.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“Charles,” Erik says, with what he considers quite remarkable patience under the circumstances, “how long is this going to last?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	And If You'll Come I’ll Take You Somewhere To Go

**Author's Note:**

> Finally back to the Holiday Fic! Thank you, all of you, for reading and having patience! (Note: though they're in a series, all the Holiday Fic are only connected thematically--the stories are stand-alone) There should be one more to go--New Year's Day...
> 
> For this one, title and opening lines courtesy of the Foo Fighters' "Halo." Slight warnings for brief mention of Erik's past with Shaw and also brief mention of abuse in Charles's childhood, but nothing graphic.

  
_and if you’ll come I’ll take you somewhere to go_   
_to keep from growing old_   
_wait and pray you’ll pick on me_   
_the day I raise my hand…_

 

“The problem is,” Raven explains, aggrievedly, “Charles is impossible to play April Fools' Day pranks on.”  
  
They’re sitting in the kitchen, sandwich detritus spread out between them, door open. Erik’d meant to acquire lunch for himself—and, all right, yes, Charles, who would forget to eat on a daily basis unless someone interrupts his research time for sustenance, and it means nothing at all, honestly, that it’s Erik who remembers to interrupt him every day, but no one else seems to think twice of Charles skipping meals and that just isn’t _right_ —but Raven and Hank had already been down there, engaged in a spirited discussion of what’s evidently an imminent holiday tradition.  
  
He looks at Charles’s sandwich, on the plate. After a second’s hesitation, taps it with a finger until the edges line up, neat and precise. Presentation’s important. Charles likes attractive things.  
  
He wonders whether he should’ve taken more care with his outfit, post-shower. And then, disgusted with himself, reminds his brain that black goes with everything and turtlenecks are perfectly practical and he shouldn’t be even considering his own wardrobe and Charles’s reaction in the same sentence.  
  
And then tugs on his left sleeve to straighten it anyway. Damn.  
  
“Why…what are you…this is a tradition? Practical jokes?”  
  
“Well, it would be,” Raven grumbles, “but it’s not exactly practical with a telepath who can hear you planning them. I know, I’ve tried.”  
  
Hank looks thoughtful. “We used to come up with some excellent scientific pranks when I was an undergraduate. There was this one time, involving nitrous oxide and the Dean’s office…”  
  
“Nope. Listen, Charles will hear you thinking about it. And then he’ll get revenge. In cruel and unusual ways.”  
  
“Revenge?” Erik props one shoulder against the doorframe, settling in to the conversation. Extra facts. New data. That’s important, leaning every scrap of information he can. To actually go back and sit down at the table would indicate too much interest, of course, and he can’t give away how badly he wants to know the details.  
  
So he hovers. Lets the doorframe hold him up, mock-casual.  
  
“Preemptive revenge, even. I’d been thinking about the usual, you know, substituting one of his books for a different copy with the pages glued together, short-sheeting the bed, maybe putting hair dye in his shampoo…of course he knew what I was planning. So he decided to attack first.”  
  
“What did he do?” Hank sounds enthralled. Erik is also enthralled, but determinedly maintains his own expression of polite interest.  
  
Raven grins. Takes a bite of her sandwich. “It was actually pretty awesome, you know, in retrospect. A week early, my class—and, yes, public school, Charles always arranged for me to go, and no one ever questioned my being there—had this field trip, to the Natural History Museum. Charles was—not jealous, not him, but—he was never allowed to—well, anyway. Not part of the story.”  
  
He was never allowed to _what?_ Erik almost asks. Shuts his mouth at the last possible second. Tightens his grip on Charles’s plate.  
  
“So he gave me this list of questions to ask. All about different animals, creatures, very scientifically detailed, incredibly clear…so I thought I was doing him a favor…”  
  
She glances at their faces. Smirks. “Come on, I was maybe ten years old and Charles was way smarter than I was. I had no idea hippogriffs weren’t real.”  
  
“Oh god,” Hank says, and tries to hide the laughter in his hands.  
  
“Every single animal on that list was something mythological. Nothing that, you know, actually existed. He was smart enough not to use obvious ones like unicorns, too. Manticores, chimeras, hippocampi…at first I was feeling awful, trying to figure out how I was going to tell him, and by the time I asked the tour guide about, oh, maybe around the selkies, I realized he’d done it on purpose.”  
  
Erik, torn between sheer horror at Charles’s heretofore unrevealed diabolical nature and utter admiration for the ingenuity, has to ask. “What happened?”  
  
“Oh, well…half the class called me Dragon Girl all afternoon, the tour guide thought I was adorable, and I put a fish in Charles’s bed after dinner.” She hops down from her chair. “Which he also saw coming, of course, but at least he had to change the sheets. So this is why my brother’s impossible to play pranks on. In case any of you had any ideas.”  
  
“…Dragon Girl,” Hank echoes, grinning, and Raven says cheerfully, “Don’t you dare, or I’ll breathe fire on you,” and Erik says “Wash the dishes before you breathe fire on anyone,” because otherwise Charles will come downstairs in the evening and quietly do them by himself without saying a word, and _then_ wonders, disgusted, when he’s turned into a figure of parental authority.  
  
“No one’s to breathe fire on anyone,” Charles himself says, appearing soundlessly at Erik’s elbow, “at least not without protective gear in place, and you can leave the dishes, I’ll do them later. Is that for me?”  
  
“Yes…and no, you won’t…they’re doing them today. It’s not your turn.” He’s always vaguely disgruntled by the fact that, although he’s spent years being attuned to the barest approaching footfall, Charles can sneak up on him with no apparent effort. Telepathy. It’s unfair.  
  
Charles grins as if he’s heard that. Erik wouldn’t be surprised if he had. In all honesty, wouldn’t be surprised if Charles were doing the stealth-approach move on purpose, simply in order to annoy him to no end.  
  
“Not really,” Charles says. “It’s only habit. Particularly in this house. Peanut butter and honey?”  
  
“Will you stop doing that? And yes, it is. Why particularly in this house?”  
  
And Raven looks at Charles, then down at the crumbs on her plate, then back at Charles. Then interjects swiftly, “Charles, do you remember that time I put the fish in your bed? What did you end up doing with it, do you remember?”  
  
What?  
  
“I…believe I was going to hide it in yours the next day, but I decided that’d be too unoriginal.” Charles picks up half the sandwich from the plate that Erik’s still holding. Takes a bite. There’s some other conversation happening, Erik realizes suddenly, words he’s not privy to being exchanged behind slightly distant blue eyes.  
  
“I put it back in the kitchen where you found it. And, as I recall, our cook at the time believed in poltergeists, so that wasn’t in fact one of my better ideas.” Around a second mouthful. “Thank you, by the way.”  
  
Raven nods. Erik looks at Charles and feels the nagging little teeth of frustration nibbling at his bones. Charles looks back, meeting his gaze this time, and then blinks at the plate. “Did you…have this perfectly centered? Before I started eating it? Equidistant from all the sides?”  
  
“Ah…”  
  
“I approve of the attention to detail. Speaking of, I think perhaps we should work on your precision skills this afternoon, don’t you? I don’t mean only small objects. Or, well, I suppose I do, at the atomic level. Feel up to playing with the electromagnetic forces of the universe?”  
  
“…yes?” Erik says, helpless in the face of an equally irresistible force with rumpled hair and sapphire eyes.  
  
“Excellent.”  
  
In the background, Raven glances from her brother to Erik, and back again. Starts to grin.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Charles says, “he does _not_ ,” and Erik asks, “What?” and Raven protests, “I hadn’t even started thinking it yet!”  
  
“You don’t want to know,” Charles declares, “and it won’t work anyway,” which is of course the exact wrong thing to say because Raven keeps grinning even as she drags Hank off toward the dishes, but Erik chooses not to point this fact out because he’s currently of the opinion that Charles deserves whatever April Fools' prank Raven attempts for him.  
  
Besides, Erik’s certain of two things. First, Charles can, quite plainly, take care of himself. And second, in the unlikely event that Charles ever can’t, Erik will be there at his side.  
  
That last isn’t even a question. It just is. The way of the world.  
  
Charles looks up at him, seeming startled, but only for a second. Then smiles, blindingly bright and sunnily beautiful, and says, “Thank you for the sandwich,” and leads him off to the lab and the siren song of purest elemental metals.  
  
The impression of tingling lemon-drop delight accompanies them all the way.  
  
  
  
Two days later, Erik’s almost forgotten about the ludicrous holiday and the idea of pranks. Has forgotten, really; it’s not as if the day means anything to him, and no one seems willing to attempt any practical jokes in his specific direction.  
  
Sean and Alex, of course, entertain themselves with the standard bucket-of-water-on-the-door, and disconnected doorknobs, and loosening the top on the salt shaker at breakfast, which Erik’s actually the one to catch because he can feel the metal wobbling out of place.  
  
He calmly screws the top back where it belongs. Makes quick use of the shaker. Then lifts his gaze and fixes it on the culprits, who are currently not-very-well-hidden around the corner.  
  
“Oh god we’re so sorry,” Alex says, and grabs Sean’s shoulder, and backs all the way out of the kitchen.  
  
Good. They deserve to be sorry. They could’ve made him ruin Charles’s eggs.  
  
Charles, when presented with breakfast, regards the fluffy scrambled heap drowsily, and then stares at his utensils until Erik sighs and surreptitiously nudges the fork. Charles before tea is not precisely functional, hence Erik’s assumption of all breakfast-related duties.  
  
It only makes sense. He can cook and Charles can’t; he’s approximately five hundred times more efficient in the morning than those blue eyes are, and he can lift a pan without touching it by hand. He’s not being domestic. He isn’t domestic, because that’s a laughable term when applied to himself.  
  
He just wants to be sure that Charles eats and gets his tea, made properly, Earl Grey with extra sugar because Charles likes the sweetness along with the strength, and it’s better for everyone if Charles is in good shape, isn’t it? Tactically sound.  
  
 _Oh how I love you_ , Charles sighs, evidently too lazy to speak aloud, when Erik hands him this morning’s cup.  
  
He’s talking to the beverage, of course, inhaling the clouds of tea-scented steam, gazing into the liquid depths ecstatically. Erik knows that. He does know that. No reason at all for his chest to suddenly ache.  
  
He finishes his own last piece of toast mechanically, because food shouldn’t be wasted, and says, “I’m going for a run.”  
  
 _I could join you_. Still not out loud, not with that massive yawn in the middle; Charles scrunches up his face and runs his hands through his hair, a sleepy kitten disturbed mid-nap, and adds, _I’ll probably need to, if you want me to eat all of this…_  
  
“No,” Erik says, as the ache in his chest intensifies, “I’m going…for a long run. And fast. Very long. Very…fast.” _Why_ does his English vocabulary tend to desert him at the worst possible moments? _Stay here. Drink your tea. Beware of Sean and Alex._  
  
“Just in general, or for some specific reason?” _And…are you sure?_  
  
 _Yes. Please._ The image of Charles, curled up at the kitchen table with a streak of morning sunlight in his hair, will be company enough. That thought hurts too, but in a good way. “And…because they’ve already traumatized Moira this morning. With the bucket over the door. I thought you heard that one.”  
  
“Oh. I did, yes. Not in time to stop it, unfortunately, though I have implanted a subtle suggestion for Sean to firmly believe he’s a mermaid the next time he’s near a large body of water. I’m awake now, however, so I doubt they’ll be able to do anything to me.” _Thank you, though_.  
  
Charles smiles at him again, hands protectively cradling the mug of tea, and Erik says, “Yes, well…a mermaid, honestly, you’ve a surprisingly Machiavellian streak, Charles,” and gets up and goes for his run and pushes himself until he can’t think of anything at all, can’t wonder whether he’s running away or running to, and to what, and where, and whom.  
  
When he gets back to his room, there’s a note on his bed.  
  
Sweaty, out of breath, he picks up the delicate paper, holding it between two fingers, trying not to drip exhaustion onto the words.  
  
It says it’s from Charles. Which makes sense; who else would casually wander into Erik’s room, unthinkingly invading his privacy, to leave a note?  
  
Even as he thinks that, though, he knows it’s unfair. Unworthy of Charles. Who might venture into Erik’s room, yes, but only if he thought circumstances warranted the intrusion. Charles believes in privacy, in having a space to call one’s own. That’s been something they’ve agreed on, recognized in each other, from the start: the need for a safe haven, all the more vital when safety is such a temporary illusion, when pain can come striking in at any moment and obliterate the world.  
  
Erik’s understood that fact for many years now. It crosses his mind to wonder, for the first time, why Charles, a telepath who’s never alone without wanting to be, understands it as well.  
  
He catches himself shivering, as the sweat dries along his skin.  
  
Why would Charles have left him a note? If the problem’s urgent, Erik’s only a thought away. And they both also know the value of expediency.  
  
He looks at the single sheet of paper again. _I’d like to tell you something, in private. Please meet me by the lake._  
  
Typewritten. Obviously suspicious. Not _entirely_ suspicious, Charles does own and use a typewriter, but all the alarm bells are clanging in his head regardless. Someone must know that he’d recognize Charles’s handwriting. Must not’ve wanted to give the game away.  
  
It is Charles’s favorite paper, though. The expensive indulgence slides through his hands like whispery silk.  
  
Someone here must have done it. Or someone who knows what Charles likes.  
  
What if it isn’t real, and it’s a design to get him out of the mansion, away from Charles’s side?  
  
What if it is real?  
  
What if Charles does want to tell him something, and has simply used the typewriter because it was convenient, and is waiting for him, smiling, with those eyes that make Erik think of deep blue oceans in summer, refreshing and sweetly cool beneath sunwarmed surfaces?  
  
What would Charles want to tell him that couldn’t be said here, in the sunlit kitchen, or upstairs in the sanctuary of the study, or in the privacy of their own minds?  
  
Private, he thinks again. Perhaps Charles doesn’t want the children exposed to any possible consequences.  
  
Erik’s brain, uninvited, puts the words _Charles_ and _exposed_ and _consequences_ and _lake_ in delicious proximity.  
  
No. No, no, absolutely not. Charles’s note says nothing along those lines. Certainly nothing suggesting that Charles secretly means that Erik should meet him by the lake and sweep him off his feet and kiss him until those blue eyes go all dark and wide and dreamy with desire.  
  
Erik promptly blames this image on that pernicious volume of Jane Austen he’d read once, years ago, killing time in a British seaside resort town. He has _not_ had a dream involving himself as Mr Darcy, with Charles as a tempting sparkling-eyed dance partner. Certainly not more than once. Or two times. At most.  
  
The wind, outside, taps at his window. Pointedly calling him back to the here and now.  
  
He runs his fingertips over the typewriter indentations of the letters, of Charles’s name below. If Charles has sent the note, it’s important. If Charles hasn’t…  
  
Well. He’ll deal with that.  
  
 _Charles?_ he asks. Calmly.  
  
 _Erik?_ The response is gratifyingly prompt, and sparks an unfamiliar twinge of emotion in his heart.  After a second he figures out that it’s a bizarre combination of relief—Charles is here, fine, answering him—and a hint of disappointment: he doesn’t get to rescue Charles from anything after all.  
  
He’d rescue Charles, if necessary. Determinedly so. Failure not an option.  
  
 _Er…thank you?_  
  
 _You weren’t meant to hear that. Where are you?_  
  
 _Don’t think so loudly about me if you don’t want me to hear_. _But the sentiment is much appreciated, you understand._ Affectionate amusement, kind as autumn apples and red-gold leaves. _As for where I am, well—I, ah…I am at the lake, in fact._  
  
Charles is there. Waiting for him.  
  
Erik forgets about his much-needed shower, and sprints back down the stairs and around the back of the mansion and down the hill, skids to a halt next to where Charles is perched comfortably atop storm-grey rocks, and demands, breathing hard, _Did you send this?_  
  
“No, actually.” Charles tips his head back to look Erik up and down. “Did you run all the way here?”  
  
“No.” Not technically a lie. He’d not started running until he’d made it down the stairs. “Then why—who—”  
  
“Who do you think? My sister, and Hank—they enlisted Sean to help break into your room through the window, by the way—and I’m informing them of the complete lack of humor of the attempt right now.” _Do you want to sit down?_  
  
The early-afternoon sunshine outlines those eyelashes, the hair, the stray bits of fuzz on today’s professorial sweater. Pools in gold and shadow on the rocks. Charles, arms hugging tucked-up knees against the hint of springtime cold, looks very young, and lovely, and like artwork, a rare moment of beauty caught on earth in sculpture.  
  
Erik shifts his feet, in the well-worn dirt path, and grumbles, “If you knew they left it for me, why’re you here?”  
  
“I got one, as well.” Charles grins. “It was attached to my favorite microscope. I believe they were trying to be clever.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“I meant to tell you, but you were already on the way here. Did you…wait, what did yours say?” There’s another question, inside those words.  
  
“Only that you had something important to tell me. Something you wanted to tell me in private. What about yours?”  
  
“Er…more or less the same.” Charles blushes, slightly. His gaze doesn’t quite meet Erik’s, instead wandering out across the lakewaters, the ripples in the wind, scurrying rustles of blue. _But you did come._  
  
 _So did you._  
  
“Erik…” But Charles stops talking, then, expression and words arrested by a distant distraction. “Oh, really, not now…”  
  
“What is it?”  
  
 _Here—_ All at once Erik finds himself snapped into the conversation, Charles serenely holding all three minds in rapport, balancing the back-and-forth with the ease of a practiced juggler. _Moira?_  
  
 _The CIA says it’s urgent, Charles. They’re very interested in this one._  
  
 _She’s a child,_ Charles retorts. _As I mentioned in the Cerebro data report. And we were occupied, before you interrupted._  
  
Erik tries not to wonder what Charles means by that. He’s not successful, because Charles grins and Moira mutters _I don’t want to know_ , followed by _The two of you please get in the car and head into the city, it’s not that far, you can be back by dinner. Just tell them she won’t be useful, please._  
  
 _Very well,_ Charles sighs, and the information lands unerringly in both their heads: young girl, some unspecified ability involving identity-altering or disguise, government quite intrigued by all the possibilities, parents very protective—  
  
 _She’s five_ , Erik snaps. _We’re not turning her over to the CIA._  
  
 _Of course we’re not. But we need to give them some convincing evidence with regard to why. We’ll have to at least meet with her._  
  
Erik glares, as best he can mentally and physically. Charles sighs again. _Look, it might be fun. If nothing else we’ll have explored a new variant of these developing mutations—_  
  
 _Fine._  
  
The link fades, leaving only himself standing next to Charles and the lake and the rocks. The wind picks up again, and Charles, despite the fluffy sweater, shivers.  
  
“We should get you inside,” Erik says, and then hastily edits that statement. “We should go inside.”  
  
“So that you can finally shower, before we depart?” Charles hops down from his perch, gracefully. The wind flirts with his hair. “Entirely in favor of that. Come on, then.”  
  
 _Charles_ , Erik says, and then isn’t sure why, when Charles turns back to grin at him, hands in his pockets, cheeks and eyes bright.  
  
 _Yes_ , Charles says, though Erik has no idea what they’ve just agreed to, and then, “I’ll buy us dinner after, in the city, if you do the driving?”  
  
Erik touches the note, crumpled up in his pocket. Feels the folds as they crinkle against his skin, warmth mirrored in blue eyes. Nods in return.  
  
  
  
The girl is indeed quite young. She has dark hair and a pronounced interest in her toy horses and far less interest in Erik and Charles and their mission.  
  
Charles stares at her, looking enchanted. “Erik, she can compel people to trade bodies! To literally experience life in someone else’s skin!”  
  
Both the parents stare at _him_ , in their turn. Erik can’t exactly blame them. For one thing, Charles has only barely made it past the hellos—and really, what sort of telepath is _that_ good at inserting foot into mouth on a regular basis?—and for another, they’re doubtless unused to anyone figuring out their daughter’s ability at a glance.  
  
Third, well, Charles, all excited and practically vibrating with enthusiasm, is worth staring at. No argument there.  
  
“We’re with the CIA,” he says to the parents, “and he’s always like this.”  
  
This statement does not appear to help.  
  
“Erik,” Charles sighs reprovingly, “I am not, and we’re not technically—well, I suppose we are, but we’re not—we’re affiliated, but we’re our own—in any case we’re honestly only here to let you know you’re not alone.”  
  
“ _Really_ always like this.”  
  
“I am _not_.”  
  
“So…” The parents look a lot alike, in fact: both of them brown and neat and small, faces similar even down to the worried expressions. Erik contemplates whether living with a child who can swap family members between bodies at will might have side effects. Considers it likely.  
  
They match the house, as well. Tidy, ordinary, and even more brown.  
  
“…so you want to—”  
  
“—recruit her? For the CIA?” They even speak like one person. Finishing each other’s sentences. Seamlessly.  
  
“Oh, no,” Charles says, earnestly. “Certainly not now, at any rate. No, we just want you to know that there are others of us out there, people you can turn to, for assistance.”  
  
“You can—”  
  
“—read minds, can’t you? What about him?”  
  
“What does he do?”  
  
“Erik, if you would?” _Something innocuous, please._  
  
 _If you insist._ As if he’d do anything to frighten the child.  
  
He settles for casually levitating a few bits of furniture: a lamp, an end table—courtesy of the bolts and screws—the television set. The girl stops playing with her horses to watch. Not afraid at all. Eyes wide with delight.  
  
 _Oh, she adores you already!_  
  
 _I am not a child-friendly person, Charles._  
  
 _I might choose to disagree, but we’ll save that for later—_ “In any case, you can see that we do know whereof we speak.” This earns blank looks. Charles sighs, and tries again. “Erik and I have become quite adept at controlling our own abilities, and we have several pupils in residence right now—”  
  
 _Pupils?_  
  
 _I have to call them something other than CIA recruits, haven’t I?_ “—and so, really, please do call us if you need anything.”  
  
“The thing is—”  
  
“—this ability can be—”  
  
“—quite disconcerting. We’re used to it—”  
  
“—mostly—”  
  
“—but others may not be.”  
  
“No,” Charles murmurs, “of course, and please rest assured that we’re not going to simply take her, we’d never do that.”  
  
They exchange relieved looks. Erik rolls his eyes, but only inwardly. They’re human, and they’re afraid; they’re parents, though, even more than that. A mother, and a father, with a child they love.  
  
He looks at the girl. She looks up at him, with the eerie perspicacity of small children. “You don’t look happy,” she says.  
  
“Alia,” chirps her mother, “don’t be rude.”  
  
“Here’s our card, in any case,” Charles says, and holds it out. “Perhaps in a few years, once she can control it a bit better…”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Perhaps.”  
  
Charles stands up, stretches, smiles, holds a hand out for Erik to get up from the clutches of the uncomfortable sofa. When their fingers touch, Charles doesn’t visibly squeeze his hand, but the sensation echoes in their heads anyway. The unspoken understanding should feel patronizing, but instead Erik finds himself smiling back.  
  
“You don’t look happy,” the girl says, “except when you look at him.”  
  
And Charles suddenly looks terribly alarmed. “Please don’t—we appreciate the sentiment but that really wouldn’t be a very good idea—”  
  
“I think you should _be_ him,” she says to Erik, and the world turns inside out and his senses collapse in on themselves as he falls to the floor.  
  
The universe is a maelstrom. Voices shouting, passions erupting, mundane petty grievances and wild overflowing joy and whipcord anger and unendurable grief, and there are so many, relentlessly everywhere, each one a person and each person like a star caught in the midst of going supernova, ceaseless transformation that rings through his heads like bells in a storm, and he thinks—if he can think, who is he again and who’s having the thought?—that this is the feeling of insanity—  
  
 _Erik!_ shouts one of the stars, determinedly and loudly enough that he focuses on it.  
  
 _Oh, good, you can hear me—listen, I know what you’re feeling because I felt it too, years ago, understand? This is just the first explosion of telepathy, your mind trying to make sense of—no, stay focused on me, you need to do the work to maintain the connection, I can’t—and breathe, that’s good, that’s excellent, well done—_  
  
 _Charles?_  
  
 _Yes!_  
  
 _Telepathy…_  
  
 _Yes, we seem to’ve traded abilities—look at me, all right?_ Charles sounds shaken, and as if he’s trying not to sound shaken. Desperately calm. Professionally competent. _You can see, in my head, the way that my shielding works. What I do to keep voices out. Just look at this—_  
  
He can see it, when he follows the glittering thread of that presence, all sweet tea and English wool and bright kind eyes. Charles doesn’t pull away, isn’t afraid. Lets Erik reach trembling clumsy fingers into his mind.  
  
Charles thinks of shields in a surprisingly literal way. Knighthood symbols and coats of arms.  
  
 _Yes…_ Charles now sounds a bit rueful. _I was awfully young the first time. Silly mistake. Now it’s just habit, of course, they’re all metaphor anyway—here, can you see how I do it? Overlapping layers, built up from the inside—you can move them around if you need to, to shore up weaker places…_  
  
He breathes. Carefully considers Charles’s layers, gently spinning solidities of wood and iron and painted crests. He can see how to do it, even if he can’t explain it; slowly, his own flicker and materialize, bit by bit and also abruptly, not there and then present.  Simple and straightforward, clean sleek metal where Charles might’ve had practiced and fluid elaborations.  
  
But they hold. And the world grows quieter.  
  
 _Lovely_ , Charles murmurs. There’s another emotion in there under all the genuine relief, but it’s one Erik can’t place. _I think you’ll be all right now, if you’d like to properly open your eyes…_  
  
Oh. That probably is a good idea, yes.  
  
When he blinks, the world settles complacently back into reality around him. He’s kneeling on the floor. Still in the brown-shaded living room. The sofa cushions peer inquisitively at him from above. And Charles is kneeling there with him, holding his hands.  
  
Except that’s not Charles’s face. That’s his own face, wearing that unfamiliar expression of affectionate concern. His hands.  
  
He looks at the hands that ought to be his. They’re very recognizable. Shorter and broader than his own, snug in entirely impractical fingerless gloves.  
  
“Yes,” Charles says, rather apologetically even though this can’t possibly be his fault, “you seem to be me. And I…well, I’m you. At the moment.”  
  
It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror.  
  
“We’re very sorry.” The parents flutter around them distractedly, like flightless and ineffectual chickens. “She doesn’t know—”  
  
“—what she’s doing, she means it for the best, and—”  
  
“—it’ll wear off, of course, don’t worry—”  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, with what he considers quite remarkable patience under the circumstances, “how long is this going to last?”  
  
Charles looks up at their hosts, and then stands up, offering a hand for Erik to do so as well. Erik takes it, because he can’t think of anything else to do.  
  
Charles’s body is short. He still has to look up at the other persons in the room even after he’s off the floor. This is fundamentally unfair. And he instantly misses his muscles.  
  
“How long _is_ this likely to last?” Charles inquires, and plucks a fork off of his sleeve and sets it gingerly on the coffee table. For the first time, Erik registers the fact that random bits of metal from everywhere in the house seem to be stuck to Charles, or lazily orbiting in the air behind his head.  
  
Magnetism. Of course.  
  
“Well—”  
  
“—it depends on how hard she was concentrating at the time—”  
  
“—but generally it’s not much more than a day.”  
  
“A _day_.”  
  
“We’re really—”  
  
“—very sorry.”  
  
“Yes,” Erik says, “thank you,” and then turns on his heel and stalks out before he can do something irrevocable, such as attempting to throttle the woman while in Charles’s body.  
  
He has short _legs_. Stalking just isn’t the same.  
  
“Sorry,” Charles says, and leaves the woman their card—“perhaps in a few years, then?”—and then runs after Erik, which means that he catches up promptly, having Erik’s excellent physique at his disposal.  
  
“So.”  
  
“So…” Charles eyes the car. With Erik’s eyes. “I’m not entirely convinced we want to return to the mansion like this…”  
  
“You…may be correct.” He knows he’s only barely clinging to those emergency-relief shields as it is. And when Charles looks at the car again, it twitches.  
  
“Damn,” Charles says, and a few less polite words to that effect.  
  
“It doesn’t take much.”  
  
“Clearly not. Hotel, then?”  
  
“Hotel,” Erik sighs, and holds out his hand until Charles surrenders the car keys—not as if either of them trusts Charles to drive at the moment, even less than usual—and gets them into the vehicle and to the nearest place that has a sign suggesting the availability of rooms, and to his own mild disgust only has to smile at the girl behind the counter with Charles’s blue eyes before she’s handing over room keys delightedly.  
  
Not that he can blame her. His own heart, treacherous beast that it is, wants to hand everything including itself over to Charles all the time. Even now.  
  
Charles saved his life, back in that house. At the very least his sanity. That’s not an exaggeration.  
  
“Erik?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You’ve got the strangest expression on my face. Like you can’t decide whether to strangle me or…” Charles stops. Turns pink. “Never mind.”  
  
“I don’t blush,” Erik says. “Stop that.”  
  
“And I don’t look around a room and calculate how many ways I could incapacitate someone with the furnishings. Third floor, she said.”  
  
“Fine. And…twelve. Thirteen if I’m allowed to use the umbrella stand.”  
  
“Oh, by all means…”  
  
It’s a luxurious room. Somewhat too luxurious. The velvety chairs, and the large mirrors, and the size of the bed, all seem to indicate that this room has, in fact, one purpose, and it does not involve sleep.  
  
Charles studies the heart-shaped pillows with great interest. “What sort of hotel did you bring us to?”  
  
“The first available one. And the first available room. You probably don’t want to sit on top of that duvet.”  
  
“You…may be right.” Charles tosses the blanket to the floor, where it happily adds an extra layer of plushness to the carpet. “So…if we’re not going home tonight—oh, this is a fantastic bed, by the way, you ought to come try it—what would you like to do?”

Erik stares at the bed. And then at Charles on the bed, sprawled there like the definition of contentment. Except that’s not Charles’s body. That’s his own. And the desire he’s feeling is for Charles, oh yes, the thoughts about what precisely they could do on said fantastic bed, pale skin and his own hands and himself fucking Charles until that glorious tea-and-scones accent goes ragged from crying his name, until Charles comes apart for him, under him, around him, blue eyes impossibly wide…  
  
Except _he’s_ Charles, right now. And the eyes looking back at him from the bed are his own, the color of steel clouds on a winter horizon.  
  
Somehow Charles manages to turn that winter into spring, just looking.  
  
Erik’s confused as hell.  
  
Charles pushes up his sleeves. Erik’s sleeves. It’s an instantly recognizable motion, a gesture that Charles makes all the time. “Turtlenecks, Erik, seriously…and black. Aren’t you warm?”  
  
“They’re practical.” He does agree that it’s warm, though. Just to make the point, when he removes Charles’s jacket and vest, he hangs them up. Neatly.  
  
Charles looks at him sideways. Then grins.  
  
He really does have a lot of teeth. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And maybe Charles likes men with toothy smiles.  
  
Charles waves a hand. Erik’s pet paperclips float up and out of one pocket. Watching, Erik feels an absurd sense of betrayal. They’re _his_ , dammit.  
  
The paperclips get joined by a metal-tipped pen from the table, and some binder rings from the hotel directory, and the unused hangers in the closet, and start twirling themselves into shapes: a circle, a music note, a wire-sculpture pineapple, a DNA helix because Charles is himself even in Erik’s body, and then something more elaborate that looks like a house, or a palace, perhaps, gracefully constructed out of wire and air and thoughts.  
  
Charles grins again. Crooks fingers in Erik’s direction. And the cufflinks pluck themselves free from his shirt and turn into tower-tops.  
  
Erik stands there and watches him play with Erik’s ability, sheer wonder manifest in every motion, and finds himself oddly breathless, as if Charles has built one of the foundations of his silly castle in the air squarely into Erik’s heart.  
  
Charles looks up from building his castle or sculpture or whatever the hell it is, and his eyes’re all lit up with delight. And Erik, still remembering how to exhale, can’t even object to the frivolity.  
  
“This is quite a lot of fun. I suspect if I had your mutation—in reality, I mean—I’d be making half the objects in the room dance with each other at any given time. How do you ever resist?”  
  
He considers possible responses, such as _I’ve_ _had more serious priorities than dancing pens_ or _We’re not here to have fun, Charles, honestly_. In the end, faced with those eyes, with his own memories of that first crackling firework joy, he just sits down on the corner of the bed. Which is indeed fantastically comfortable.  
  
“You can also make them sing. If you can feel the…the individual resonance, in each piece, if you can vibrate them at the molecular level…like tuning forks…”  
  
Charles _is_ an academic, at heart. Curious, and a quick study. The air chimes with elation, a chorus of incandescent metallic glee, swirling up to surround them and echo off furniture, bare skin, laughter.  
  
“Brilliant!”  
  
“Yes, all right…would you like to play with heat, next?”  
  
“I—you—can do that? Absolutely yes—”  
  
“All right, then…here, can I just show you…?” He’s not certain he can explain what he does, to make the atoms glow and twinkle like miniature suns. But he can possibly demonstrate, if they can manage the connection.  
  
Charles shuts those familiar-unfamiliar eyes; Erik tries not to feel disappointed, but then hears, very clearly, his own name, tapping at the doors of his mind: _Erik?_  
  
 _Charles?_  
  
 _Good, you can hear me. I’m not that practiced at being on this side of the encounter…_ There’s that fractionally wrong note again, piano out of tune; but it vanishes before Erik can ask _. Just…follow my voice back to me. Think as precisely as you can about what you’d say or feel or want me to know…not quite that loudly!…ah, much better. Oh, like that?_  
  
And the lines and curves of Charles’s sculpture flare with light, red-gold and radiant.  
  
The light plays across Charles’s—Erik’s—face. Catches in the waves of shorter hair, the gleam of that smile. And Erik, pulled along in the wake, has to smile back.  
  
He’s still confused. But it’s an exquisite kind of hell.  
  
And that’s how the afternoon, and evening, go by.  
  
Charles calls his sister to say they won’t be back that night; Erik can hear the eye-roll even over the phone, but she seems to assume that they’re out having fun, and that this is nothing unusual: “Just drag my brother home before the bar closes, all right? And don’t let him hook up with anyone I wouldn’t approve of!”  
  
Charles sounds like Erik, so of course she assumes she’s talking to Erik; Charles, however, sounds _extraordinarily_ like Erik when he snaps, “No hook-ups of any variety are happening tonight, I can assure you,” and then hangs up the phone.  
  
Erik blinks. Charles blushes again—he really needs to stop doing that while wearing Erik’s face—and says, “I’m sorry. I’m not—the bars, the parties, yes, I did that, still do, occasionally, but it’s not—I can explain.”  
  
“You don’t need to justify yourself to me.” Even if something in his stomach twists at the thought of Charles out drinking and laughing and going home with someone who isn’t Erik and touching and being touched.  
  
“Raven thinks that I do it for fun,” Charles says, very earnestly. The emotion’s uncomfortably honest. And Charles leans in too close to him, eyes wry and weary and open. “And that’s not wrong, it is fun, but…that isn’t why.”  
  
Erik opens his mouth to ask what, then, _is_ the why, and looks into those eyes again, and the realization arrives like a truth he’s always known and never understood: Charles knows exactly how difficult it is to be alone.  
  
Charles doesn’t elaborate, and Erik can’t think of any good words to say, and he’s not sure how to deal with this emotional honesty, uncertain how to answer in kind when his secrets are all he has.  
  
And the moment breaks, as Charles makes a small dismissive amused noise, self-deprecation, and glances away; and Erik, determinedly not cursing out loud, says, “I’m going to…I should…shower,” and retreats while he has some semblance of self-control.  
  
The bathroom’s luxurious, too. Naturally. All gold and marble and wall art like the designer’s heard about Venice from books and got most of it nearly correct.  
  
Erik stares at the lake of a tub for a while, and then decides he may as well turn his excuse into truth, and starts poking at knobs. Misses being able to flip them with a thought, with irrational longing.  
  
He sighs. Peels off his shirt. Bites his lip. Not one of his own habits, but one he seems to pick up around Charles. He doesn’t like giving information away, no nervous tics or gestures, but sometimes it’s that or say the things he can’t say, shouldn’t admit.  
  
And then he stops, not because he’s biting a lip that’s not his own this time, but because there’s something else not right.  
  
He steps over to the mirror.  
  
Leans in more closely. Studies that face, from inches away. Runs his tongue, Charles’s tongue, over that unfairly bright mouth; finds the roughness again. It’s a small scar, the kind left by a person’s own teeth, perhaps, when smashed viciously into lips.  
  
He feels his hands, Charles’s eloquent academic’s hands, curling into fists.  
  
Scars. Charles has scars.  
  
There are more, now that he’s looking with purpose. A thin line mostly covered by hair, near one temple. An ugly crooked knot of silver-pink over ribs. The worst one, slicing an uncaring path through the freckles of an arm, jagged and vicious and long ago healed.  
  
Why? What happened?  
  
What _happened?_  
  
He doesn’t realize how intensely he’s thinking it until the images start flooding in: Charles, much smaller and skinny and practically weightless; cruel fists and laughter and words: _not my son, you just stay out of my way, be grateful you’re not on the street_ ; bruises that never heal and excuses made to doctors and concerned relatives who after a while stop coming around; the sharp splintery crack of broken bone and blood staining the carpet in the library, turning Charles’s last refuge red and dark…  
  
The memories sear like wildfire in answer to his demand and they keep bubbling back up and they burn and scald like pressurized steam and then he hears a sound from the other room and the whole world goes instantly cold.  
  
Not a gasp. More like the cessation of breath.  
  
Erik’s heart freezes in his chest. And the universe shatters into silence.  
  
He spins around and bolts out of the steam-shrouded bathroom, heedless of his shirtless state, out into the suddenly too-broad hotel room. Flings himself across the space to Charles’s side.  
  
Charles is starting to push himself up on his elbows by the time Erik gets there, blinking, dazed. “So…that was unexpected…oh, and fairly painful…”  
  
“Stay put.” Erik uses one arm to ease him back into the pillows. His arm. Charles’s arm. His own body should be more muscular, stronger, but Charles doesn’t take advantage of those muscles to resist, only lets Erik coax him back down.  
  
“Are you all right? I didn’t mean—I never meant to—Charles, you—I’m sorry. I’m so—tell me you’re all right. Please.”  
  
“Well…clearly we’re going to have to work on shields that keep thoughts in as well as out…”  
  
“That’s not an answer!”  
  
“Oh, yes, it is…sorry. I’m fine. I’m only…” Charles closes his eyes again. There’s a small furrow of pain right between his eyebrows. Erik’s eyebrows. He’s never really examined his own face in pain before, so he has no basis for comparison. But this expression is all Charles: that attempt to hide the hurt, to keep other people from worrying when he thinks they shouldn’t have to.  
  
“You’re only what?” He knows better than to believe that _fine_. “Charles? Talk to me.”  
  
“It’s only a headache, I’ve had worse. Though…not lately, I must admit. Sort of feels as if you’ve hit me with a very large sledgehammer…is that how it feels when I do this to you?”  
  
“No.” He hates himself a little more than usual. “No. I’m sorry. You—when you do it it’s more like…lifelines. In blizzards.”  
  
“What? Oh. Like finding a way back to lighted windows, coming home…very poetic of you.” Charles’s eyes are still closed. “Thank you, though. Even if it’s not true.”  
  
“It is true. Is there anything I can do?” Anything. Please. Anything at all.  
  
Charles doesn’t move and doesn’t have the telepathy at the moment and Erik’s shielding frantically, belatedly, too belatedly; but he gets the impression that Charles is indulging his need for action anyway. “Tea would be lovely, thank you…”  
  
“Of course.” With the act, the clatter, the contented burble of the in-room instant machine, the world grows a bit calmer, reassured by normality. Charles wants tea. Charles can still talk. Erik hasn’t shattered the inside of that brilliant mind with his brute-force invasion after all.  
  
Charles sits up, when Erik comes back over in a cloud of Earl Grey steam and worry, and collects the mug out of his hands. “ _Just_ like coming home.”  
  
Erik watches his own hands cradle welcome heat, his own throat move as Charles swallows. All at once he’s reminded again that he’s shirtless. His skin—Charles’s skin—prickles at the contrast.  
  
They’re both right there, sitting on the pillowy bed. So close. And the freckles on his arm, Charles’s arm, glitter up at him, tempting as sin.  
  
But then Charles-in-Erik’s-body, the Charles leaning back into the pillows with a tiny crease between his eyebrows, shuts his eyes for a second, taking another sip.  
  
Charles isn’t sobbing in pain, isn’t crying. Not out loud. None of that’s out loud. The memories drip like acid along raw nerves.  
  
He opens his mouth. Then stops. What if talking will only make this worse?  
  
“It’s all right.” Charles looks at him over the top of the mug. “You’ve already seen the worst of it, in any case.”  
  
He could say _I didn’t know_ , but that’s obvious. No one knows. Charles doesn’t tell anyone. Not even him.  
  
Charles tries to be strong for everyone. What everyone else needs.  
  
“You…that was…your stepfather?”  
  
“Kurt, yes.” One more sip, measured and precise. But the mug shakes slightly when lowered again. “And my stepbrother. They were…not what you might call affectionate relations.”  
  
“They hurt you.”  
  
“I was younger, then. I hadn’t…I didn’t have the range I do now—not _now_ now, I mean, but on any other day—and I couldn’t always…anticipate them. If I heard them coming I could turn them aside, but…well, that was my training, I suppose.” There’s a wealth of emotion just under the surface in that voice. Old hurts, disguised by casual humor. Lightness masking bottomless chasms. An apology, as if Charles feels the need to explain why he’d failed to protect himself on a few scattered occasions over years of relentless abuse.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, desperately. And Charles looks up at him, and smiles, across the years and the tea-scented space.  
  
“I’m all right. I promise. Then, and now…but I do still have a bit of a headache, I know it’s early, but would you mind if I just finish the tea and sleep for a while? Weren’t you going to shower?”  
  
“I…do you want…I could stay with you.”  
  
“No, go on. I’ll be fine.” Another sip of tea, another smile. Reassurance. Charles comforting him. Arrows into his heart. They thump home, solidly.  
  
But Charles transfers the tea to his left hand, reaches over, and takes Erik’s hand with his right. And the arrowpoint sharpnesses ease, inexplicably, at the touch. “We’re fine,” Charles says, holding his hand, and Erik nods.  
  
He’s still feeling guilty, so he tries to make it quick. Avoids looking at the mirror, or the body. Is successful until he strips off Charles’s underwear, at which point his brain catches up to what his hands’re doing.  
  
Naked. He’s in Charles’s body, and he’s naked.  
  
He stands under the rainfall of the shower. Scrubs himself resolutely with soap. Tries not to look. Then remembers that Charles, not being at the moment telepathic, can’t see him looking. And Charles _is_ all right; if not perfectly so, at least enough that he’d practically shooed Erik off to the shower.  
  
Charles probably isn’t thinking about Erik in the shower. Charles is drinking tea, safe and warm under all the blankets; or possibly asleep by now, curled up in the embrace of the bed, amid tangled satin sheets, with one hand tucked under his face, the way he tends to drift off while reading…  
  
Erik’s never claimed to be a perfectly scrupulous person. He gives in.  
  
Charles’s cock lies nestled in a bed of curly dark hair, with unexpected ginger highlights like surprising secret treasure. He’s not aroused, not at the moment, but as he gingerly slides one hand along that water-slick skin, feeling absurdly like an intruder, the arousal comes, stirring to life under his touch.  
  
Charles is, if not as long as Erik in this regard, thicker, and pleasantly curved. Uncircumsized, which is…different, and surprisingly sensitive, unless that’s only Charles himself, hedonist that he so often is.  
  
He strokes one hand, one of Charles’s hands, over himself. Tries not to gasp at the sight, the sensation. He can’t. He can’t do this in Charles’s body.  
  
Can he?  
  
He might never get this chance again, the opportunity to see what Charles looks like, feels like, sounds like, when he reaches that peak.  
  
He curls his hand around that length. Strokes. Charles’s body is beautifully responsive, and the motion, the friction, sends shivers all the way along his spine.  
  
One finger, over that tingling slit. Pressure just in that spot. Wetness, not from the shower, beads up in response.  
  
He wants this. He wants this so badly. He just wants.  
  
But he thinks of blue eyes, back in that bed; they’re his own eyes, of course, right now, but that’s not what he sees when he closes his own.  
  
He sees dark hair, tumbling irrepressibly into one eye; he sees hands reaching out to clasp shoulders or grip arms in encouragement but flinching away from any touch initiated by someone else. Sees lips always on the verge of a smile, glad to find other people happy, but holding back when anyone else might’ve laughed out loud.  
  
He sees Charles, kind and cheerful and arrogant and complicated and wounded beneath the surface, out of eyesight but omnipresent, old hurt that informs every choice he ever makes, casual or life-changing.  
  
The worst part is knowing that Charles wouldn’t even be surprised. That he’d nod, taking it in stride: Erik wanted his body, wanted to get off using his body, and that made Erik satisfied, and didn’t cause any undue distress to said body, so. Fair enough.  
  
Erik can even hear the words, in that Earl-Grey-and-medieval-spires accent: of course you wanted to, curiosity’s only natural, and you didn’t harm me in any way, so don’t worry, we’re fine…  
  
But that’s not fine. Shouldn’t be.  
  
Charles wouldn’t do it to him. Might be curious, might look, but wouldn’t follow through. Erik knows that the same way he knows his own name, the way he’s never doubted himself and who he has to be. Charles wouldn’t do it to him, and wouldn’t be surprised if Erik did, not because it’s Erik here in Charles’s body but because Charles wouldn’t be surprised to have himself used that way by anyone at all.  
  
And he _has_ harmed Charles. Charles, who’s lying out there in bed with a brutal headache and old memories stirred murkily up by the unwarranted intrusion.  
  
He takes his hand away from Charles’s cock, mentally curses himself for the insane and inexplicable sudden moral scruples, and flips the shower knob all the way to ice cold.  
  
When he emerges from the shower—having taken quite a bit longer and quite a lot more cold water than strictly necessary—Charles _is_ asleep, or pretending to be asleep. There’s a suspicious flush of color on his cheekbones. Erik’s cheekbones.  
  
Erik hasn’t blushed about sex in years, if ever. The sight of himself doing so now is rather unnerving. And he considers himself an expert on unnerving.  
  
But if Charles isn’t going to say anything, he can’t bring it up. How can he? _I was thinking about you in the shower and I almost got myself off with your hand on your cock, imagining your eyes and the sounds you’d make as I fucked you, and I stopped because it felt too wrong, like I was doing it all to you without your consent?_  
  
He can’t say that out loud. Not even in their heads. Certainly not while Charles is determinedly breathing slowly and steadily and not facing him.  
  
He pulls on his—Charles’s—underwear, even though it’s a day old, and for good measure his slacks as well, and then looks back at the bed.  
  
Charles turns over, sleepily, and makes a small sound, and his brow’s still furrowed with hints of pain, and Erik stops thinking and slips into bed beside him and wraps both arms around him and holds him close until they both slide into dreamless sleep.  
  
  
  
They check out in the morning. Erik tries to argue against this, but Charles insists, on the grounds that they can’t justify being gone that long when neither of them is truly infirm, and Erik doesn’t have a good counterargument, so he’s forced to reluctantly agree.  
  
When they get into the car, though, he almost reconsiders.  
  
The wind’s still blowing, and it howls and yelps, racing around their metal refuge. Springtime, but a chilly one, full of ice in the air.  
  
Charles’s face—Erik’s face—looks pale. Lines of tension, distress, around his lips, his eyes. They’d not been there, or not as deeply, the previous night.  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m…” Charles stops. Trailing off.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, more forcefully than he means to.  
  
“Oh…sorry. It’s…I’m not…this isn’t very comfortable.”  
  
This _what?_  
  
He asks the question aloud. Pretends he can blame the slight shakiness on the fact that it’s Charles’s voice, not his.  
  
“The…telepathy. The not-telepathy. Me being…not me.”  
  
“Ah. It’s that bad?”  
  
“It’s as if…” Charles hesitates, unsure. Erik realizes that he’s never seen Charles truly unsure about anything before. “Imagine growing up surrounded by music. Rock, jazz, opera, blues, anything you could ever imagine, all singing together, all messy beautiful improvised combinations…and then imagine going deaf, all at once. Not hearing anything at all.”  
  
“Charles—”  
  
“Even that. I can… hear you, I can see you, right here, but you’re not…everything’s unreal.” Charles reaches over and sets a hand on Erik’s arm. It isn’t comforting. “Like a painting. Two-dimensional. Flat.”  
  
Sensory deprivation had been one of Shaw’s early techniques. The idea’d been to discover whether Erik could find the metal in a room with his mind alone. Blindfolded, naked, hooded, ears plugged, left in darkness for hours…  
  
All of that’s mirrored in Charles’s eyes, when they meet his.  
  
And Erik feels a sudden throb of rage: Charles is the good one, the kind one, the one who carries his scars in silence. Charles doesn’t deserve this. Should never have to understand what Erik’s gone through. Not like this.  
  
“I’ve only got a headache,” Charles says, and pats him on the arm as if Erik’s the one in need of rescue. Erik wants to break something. Can’t, not without physical effort, without his own abilities. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”  
  
“You’re not fine now.”  
  
“Let’s just go home.” Charles sighs. Tips his head back against the headrest. “They said it’d wear off in about a day. If we’re lucky it’ll happen before we get there.”  
  
Erik sighs, too. Starts up the car.  
  
They’re not lucky. Despite the length of the drive, and the delay they make to stop for lunch, there’s no change in their respective physical states by the time they arrive at the mansion doors.  
  
Raven’s on the front steps to meet them, along with Hank, who looks rather miserable, possibly—Erik stretches out perceptions, cautiously, to confirm—because he’s been the audience for Raven’s grumbles about Charles and irresponsibility and self-sabotaging behavior for the past day and a half.  
  
He glances at Charles, surreptitiously, as he gets out of the car. As Charles sits still for a moment, reactions just a fraction too slow, before moving to do the same.  
  
Raven’s wrong. She loves her brother, but she’s wrong about this.  
  
He wonders how he’s going to explain, as he walks around and offers a hand up for Charles, who takes it with gratitude and a heartbreaking touch of surprise.  
  
And then he doesn’t have to, because Raven scowls at him from three feet away, hands on hips. “You’re not Charles.”  
  
“Ah…no, I’m—”  
  
“Where’s my brother?”  
  
“Right here.” Charles looks even more pale now—the confirmation that, despite all the familiar minds around him, he can’t feel any of them, Erik guesses—but he’s still managing to talk. “We…seem to’ve switched bodies. And also abilities, which would make sense if that’s rooted in our genetic make-up at a fundamental—”  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
“More or less yes—”  
  
“Professor,” Hank says eagerly, “how did this happen? Do you know if the effects could be duplicated, or—”  
  
“Oh my god this is all kinds of cool!” That’s Sean, who’s just emerged from the open doors, blinking. “Did you two, like, switch bodies or something?”  
  
“How did you know,” Erik says, which is meant to be a demand but he’s still trying to process all the reactions plus keep an arm around Charles, who looks ready to fall over at any second.  
  
“Dude. Please. You even stand differently. That’s totally the Prof, and you’re…um oh god don’t kill me.”  
  
“I’m not killing anyone!” Yet. He may have to reconsider his stance, if this conversation continues.  
  
Alex emerges, and inquires, with great interest, “Who’s killing who now?”  
  
“If the two of you wouldn’t mind I’d love to examine—”  
  
“ _No_.”  
  
“This,” Raven says, looking at them delightedly, “is the best April Fools' prank ever. Charles, you win. Again.”  
  
“No,” Erik snarls again, “this is not a prank, this is not some form of entertainment, and it’s not going to be permanent, and no one touches Charles without my permission—”  
  
“Really?”  
  
Oh. That’s from the subject of Erik’s possessiveness himself. Peeking over inquisitively from the shelter of Erik’s arm. Well. Damn.  
  
“You,” he says finally, one last attempt at reestablishing order, “are going upstairs. To bed.”  
  
“I am, am I?” Those eyes regard him with distressing shrewdness. Erik wonders momentarily whether that’s what he looks like, interrogating suspects. No wonder they all break so easily.  
  
Or maybe that’s just himself facing Charles.  
  
“Yes,” he says, “you are.”  
  
“Oh…well, all right. For now. Hank, if you’d like, I can write up my notes about the sensations involved in the transfer—”  
  
“If you would, I’d love to read—”  
  
“No!”  
  
Charles, miraculously, stops arguing, though that’s probably just so that he can look at Erik with _that_ expression, all plaintive eyes and imploring eyebrows.  
  
“Stop that,” Erik says weakly, very aware that this situation is teetering on the brink of out of his control. “Just…Charles, please. I can _feel_ you being in pain.”  
  
This gets everyone present to look at Charles with alarm; Charles himself scowls at Erik. “You very much did not need to say that out loud.” And Erik’s belt buckle rattles in displeasure.  
  
Erik gazes at him, tries for his best imitation of Charles’s pleading-kitten eyes, and says, as close to a whisper as he can make it so as not to shout inside that throbbing head _, please. You can compare notes with Hank later, I’ll even give you mine, whatever you want me to write down, but please_.  
  
And Charles smiles a little, says, “You can stop looking at me as if you think we’re performing a deathbed scene in a dreadful American soap-opera, and all right, yes, compromise accepted.” _Upstairs?_  
  
 _Upstairs_. He keeps his arm around Charles. Especially when he notices that Charles is taking more advantage of said arm once they’re out of sight of everyone else.  
  
Charles’s room isn’t the master bedroom; Erik knows why not, now. It is, however, a perfect reflection of its occupant in architectural form: not too large, irrepressibly welcoming, a hurricane of highly literate untidiness complete with overflowing bookshelves and expensive down-filled blankets, plus midnight-hued silk sheets and pillowcases.  
  
“I like the way they feel,” Charles says, brightly, wearily, obviously both exhausted and trying to sound normally flirtatiously cheerful, “against my skin. Er. Your skin, at the moment. Sorry.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“…never mind. Are you—you don’t have to stay. With me, I mean. This really ought to wear off soon, it’s been nearly a day by now and if I just sleep for a while I’m sure—”  
  
“I’m not leaving,” Erik informs him, sitting down on the side of the bed to reinforce that fact.  
  
“But—”  
  
“Charles, there is literally nothing you could say or do that would keep me from staying in this room.”  
  
Charles closes his mouth—Erik’s mouth—and simply looks at him for a few too-perceptive seconds. “Why is that?”  
  
He probably should’ve been expecting that question. He doesn’t have a good answer. More accurately, he does. But the words that instantly present themselves astonish even him.  
  
“You’re in pain,” he says instead. Still three short words; but not those words.  
  
“It’s not that it hurts, precisely…”  
  
“You and I both know what it is.” He inches a bit closer, for better observation. Charles doesn’t move away. “Don’t tell me you’re fine when you’re not. You don’t need to—just don’t.”  
  
And Charles smiles, just a little. Reaches over and takes Erik’s hand, slotting their fingers together. Short and broad and freckled; long and powerful and callused. Somehow that’s perfect. They fit. “No. I tell you when I’m not fine. I did, earlier. In the car.”  
  
The wind purrs and coos around the windows, outside. Inside, the room is dim, and cool, and private, the shades drawn and the lights off, the layered hues of muted amber and wood and silk surrounding them as they sit on the bed, hands touching.  
  
“Yes,” Erik says, remembering, realizing, “you did,” and, carefully, “thank you,” and then, because that’s just not enough, “Charles?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“That attempt at a practical joke…yesterday, out at the lake…”  
  
“I am sorry about my sister.” Charles shuts his eyes, but curls his body more closely toward Erik’s place on the bed, as if seeking heat, or sunlight, or comfort. “She shouldn’t’ve involved you.”  
  
Erik shifts position, sets his other hand on Charles’s back, starts to rub gently, easing away the tension. Charles opens drowsy eyes, surprised, then smiles and shuts them again. “That feels marvelous, thank you…”  
  
“Of course. But…what I was attempting to say…didn’t you wonder why I was there? Why I came even after you answered me?”  
  
“I…honestly, I did wonder. But I didn’t think I should ask. You might’ve told me you were scouting an escape route, or taking notes on my combat readiness in unexpected situations, or memorizing all the potential weak points for attacks on the house…” Under that, though, there’s a whisper-thin thought like spun-silver thread: _of course_ _not no it wasn’t for me can’t expect but oh if it had been…_  
  
“Unexpected situations,” Erik echoes, aloud, “yes. Like this one, perhaps,” and then he leans forward and kisses Charles, because he wants to and he’s not ashamed or hesitant about what he wants, because that last melancholy phrase is still ringing in his head like a wistful bell, because Charles wants this and Erik wants this and they want this together.  
  
It’s a bit awkward, because he’s wearing Charles’s body, and technically kissing his own lips. But he shuts his eyes, and all the technicalities fade and dissolve in the white heat of mutual astonished joy.  
  
 _Erik_ , Charles says, _Erik—!_ and then gives himself over to laughter, effervescent and sweet and bubbling over like champagne-froth and elation, hands pulling Erik down into the bed beside him, holding on.  
  
 _I love you_ , Erik tells him, not letting go, and Charles thinks the words at the exact same instant, and the universe crackles and fizzes with revelation. Fireworks and trumpets. Rainbows saturated with color. All the melodramatic metaphors becoming real. Everything.  
  
 _Everything_ , Charles agrees, and then opens his eyes, and then gasps again and the room spins—  
  
 _Literally_ spins. Perceptions flipped and swapped and turned around and back.  
  
And he’s lying on the bed with Charles, looking at Charles in his arms, out of his own eyes.  
  
 _…oh, hello,_ Charles manages weakly, after a second of astounded silence. Trust Charles to get in the first word.  
  
“Charles,” Erik says, very carefully, not moving, “are you all right?” The headache must’ve stayed with Charles, because he certainly doesn’t have it, or only by association. The universe hums with satisfaction and electromagnetism. Rightness, deep down in his bones.  
  
Unless Charles _isn’t_ all right, in which case Erik will take said universe apart to make him feel even fractionally better.  
  
 _Probably unnecessary; you can spare the universe for another day. Thank you, though_. “And…I think so, yes.”  
  
 _Headache?_ He stretches out one finger, carefully. Uses it to nudge a curl of curious hair out of morning-glory eyes. “The universe wouldn’t stand a chance. If you needed me.”  
  
 _A bit…_ Charles tips his head, leaning into Erik’s hand. “I mean the headache. Only a bit. I feel like I can hear and see and breathe, again. And I need you more than just a bit. I love you.”  
  
“I want you to breathe,” Erik tells him, not the most romantic phrasing in the world but it gets Charles to wriggle a little closer, fitting their bodies together, all wrapped up in each other and the decadent sheets, so he guesses that the phrasing’s good enough. In any case, he means it completely. _And I love you._  
  
 _Yes, you do._ “Regardless of which bodies we’re in. Though I am rather partial to yours. To you being in yours, I mean.”  
  
Erik considers this statement briefly, and then _has_ to say it. “I could be…in yours, again.” _If you’d like me to._  
  
Charles blinks, stares at him, and then begins laughing out loud, so hard he can’t talk. _Oh, god, that was terrible, and brilliant, absolutely the best pick-up line ever—!_  
  
“Yes, all right, you can stop laughing now…” He doesn’t really mind. Charles laughing means that Charles is fine, not in pain, here in his arms and safe and happy and loving and beloved, where Charles always ought to be.  
  
It comes as a kind of calm peaceful shock to realize that this is where he, Erik, always wants to be as well.  
  
 _You can_. Charles smiles at him, unexpectedly sweet for someone who’s currently thinking _those_ thoughts about Erik’s body in the background. _You can_.  
  
Charles knows everything about him. Has _been_ him. And believes those words can be true. Believes that no matter what happens, they’ll find themselves here in this bed at the end of the day.  
  
And Erik believes that too.  
  
“I told you I wouldn’t leave,” he says. “I meant it. Mean it.” _I love you._  
  
 _And I love you_. “So…about you being inside me, then…”  
  
And Erik laughs, and holds him a little closer. Murmurs, because his hand’s still cupping Charles’s face and he can feel the rapid flutter of that pulse beneath his fingertips and he knows that the headache’s continuing to lurk beneath the surface-wave of elation, and also because he knows precisely the dismayed reaction that the words will provoke, “Yes. But later. Not now.”  
  
 _But—!_  
  
 _I want to hold you. While you breathe_. “Later. I promise. We will do everything, together, later. Understand?”  
  
Charles laughs again, astonished and wondering and happy. Says, “Yes, absolutely, especially if you say so in that tone,” and, quietly, again, answering that promise of everything, _yes. Understood_.  
  
And they hold each other, secure in the midst of rumpled sheets and silently approving pillows, while the springtime afternoon stretches goldenly on.


End file.
